When making a realistic environment we must look at the world around us and figure out how the environment works. What are the things that make a space look unique? How does the weather affect the way the texture will be preserved? There are many ways we can make scenes look like photos, the key is to have an eye for detail. Remember, that most insignificant thing, which you may not even notice, will make or break the picture. Details are important, so take the time to make them.

Lighting is one of the things that most get wrong. I find that looking at real world photography is the best way to capture the lighting just right. Don't try to wing it or make it they way you think it should look, get it right or you might as well quit now.

In this tutorial we will learn how to texture a scene and make the lighting work. The first step is to get the scene modeled and looking just right. For times sake we will use a very simple scene of an abandoned room.

The first step is to get the basic structure of the room laid out. Then we can start fitting objects to the space to make the scene look populated.

For this I just decided to make it simple and create the structure from a couple of boxes scaled to the right measurements. Remember to make all of the walls. Just because they are not in the cameras view, does not mean that they won't affect the lighting in your scene.

Next we can start to fill the space with objects. I wanted the scene to be empty, but not too empty. I chose to make a couple buckets, boxes, and a mattress in the background.

Like I said, very basic:

Some nice boxes; don't worry about the cull of the boxes; they will not affect anything since they will be in the shadows.